Between the Still and Moving ImageOct 1, 2008–Jan 4, 2009

Andrew Lampert, still from Varieties of Slow, 2005. Triple-projection film and performance, dimensions variable. Courtesy Public Opinion Laboratory, New York

STILLMOVING

October 1–November 2, 2008

Photography is part of the DNA of cinema. This exhibition examines the relationship between the still and moving image by artists and filmmakers whose works use stillness, slowness, light, cinematographic composition, and movement to construct different perceptions of time. Some works engage with place, extending our perception of time into the physical space of the gallery. Others draw our attention to everyday objects rendered almost three-dimensional by the camera's unmoving eye. The still photograph is the explicit subject of several works: collaged, held in front of the camera, or placed on a hot plate and left to burn as the image slowly disappears before our eyes.

WILLIAM EGGLESTON ON FILM

November 5, 2008–January 4, 2009

While William Eggleston is best known for his still photography, particularly his color work of the 1960s and 70s, Eggleston also experimented with video. Eggleston'sStranded in Canton (c. 1973–74) is a home-movie portrait of friends and acquaintances in the South, shot in bars, juke joints, and roadside diners. The Whitney presents a feature-length cut of this video along with three recent documentary films about Eggleston's work and life: William Eggleston in the Real World,by Michael Almereyda, William Eggleston: Photographer,by Reiner Holzemer, and By the Ways: A Journey with William Eggleston,by Vincent Gérard and Cédric Laty.

WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION

Babette Mangolte (b. 1941) is a filmmaker and photographer, whose documentary recordings of performances by avant-garde artists and dancers such as Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, Robert Morris, Robert Wilson, Simone Forti, and Lucinda Childs are considered classic works of the 1970s.

Mangolte's film The Camera: Je or La Camera I (1977) examines the power relations inherent in the construction of both still and moving images, folding one medium inside the other. Mangolte constructs a narrative around her taking photographs of a series of models as she instructs them how to pose. We watch as the models, more accustomed to the still camera, become increasingly self-conscious on film, evoking a sense of empathy and anxiety in the viewer.

Andrew Lampert, Varieties of Slow, 2008 Triple-projection film and performance

Andrew Lampert (b. 1976) is a New York-based filmmaker, whose work often includes aspects of installation art and performance. Varieties of Slow, a three-screen 16mm film installation, constructs a framework of time that operates in direct opposition to conventional "cinema time."

In this installation, each screen shows the same film projected at a different speed–sixteen, eighteen, and twenty-four frames per second. At certain moments during the day, the projectionist makes interventions--changing the lenses, covering them with colored gels, or even moving the projectors’ position within the space--that further alter our perception of the work.

Time and Place

Time and Place features films in which the camera explores the city. Some focus on New York—Times Square, the meatpacking district, and Mulberry Street in the Lower East Side; in one film, the cracks in the sidewalk become the primary subject. A fixed camera records a silent street in Lodz, Poland and a flea market in East Berlin is captured just after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In this group of films, the photograph becomes the subject: the frame is revealed as a central element in defining the boundary between stillness and movement and the composition of the film strip--a series of still images printed onto celluloid--is made explicit through re-photography.